


Dreamless

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Chloe/Rush, Comfort Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, Nightmares, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 17:00:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6478531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe seeks out Rush for comfort and distraction after a nightmare, and Rush is all too happy to provide it for her. Perhaps he can fall into a dreamless sleep himself in the process.</p>
<p>Established Chloe/Rush relationship, working on the principle that Chloe and Matt never really got over the whole ‘Chloe becoming Nakai’ thing, and they drifted apart, with Chloe getting closer to Rush as time went on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamless

Nick doesn’t turn around as the door to the bridge opens with a hiss and soft footsteps pad slowly down towards the command chair. He knows exactly who his late night visitor is. He’s alone on the bridge, at least, he was up until a moment ago, and he stopped working a few minutes ago; perhaps he could sense that something was not quite all right. He’s just been watching the mesmerising ribbons of FTL swirling past them, and taking a moment to appreciate the utter and unmatched beauty of space in her full glory.

“The same dream?” he asks as the footsteps come to a stop beside him, and finally he turns. Chloe nods, and without any further prompting, he opens his arms for her. She curls up in his lap, resting her head against his chest and welcoming his embrace. Nick buries his face in her hair, trying to give her as much physical comfort as he can.

“They’re getting more frequent,” she says eventually, toying with the cuffs of her jacket where the thumb holes are starting to fray. “Ever since we crossed over into this galaxy… I’m worried, Nick. I think something’s going to happen.”

Nick doesn’t reply, because he’s not entirely sure what would be the most appropriate thing to reassure her at the moment. Chloe is used to hearing unpleasant truths from him, but they agreed early on, back when everything was still so up in the air, that they would not lie to each other. So he remains silent, because he doesn’t know what the return of her nightmares means and he doesn’t want to lie and tell her that everything’s going to be all right when he knows that it likely won’t be.

“Do you think they might come back?” Chloe presses. “That they’ve found some way of tracking the ship again?”

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know.”

It’s a pathetic answer in the grander scheme of things, really, but it’s the best and most truthful one that he can give in the circumstances.

“What if they do come back?” Chloe’s half speaking to him, half to herself, a murmur against his shirt. “What do you think Young will do?”

“Well, knowing the Colonel as I do, I would imagine that he’ll take the all guns blazing approach and defend his people at all costs,” Nick replies. “He won’t let them take you, Chloe.”

“But what about you?” she asks. “I wasn’t the only one that they took to start with. They may have… got slightly further in their experimentation with me, but that doesn’t mean that you weren’t there too.”

“Well, I’ll probably have to take my chances,” Nick says dryly. The truce between him and Young is still holding, all these months later, but he knows that it would only take the slightest indiscretion on either of their parts for it all to come crashing down around them and send the ship into turmoil again. “I promise, Chloe, that I will do everything in my power to make sure nothing happens to you. Or to me. We’ll get through this. We’ll get through the nightmares.”

He hasn’t admitted to her yet that his own bad dreams have been coming more frequently as well. He supposes that he didn’t notice at first because he spends so little time asleep compared to her, and when he does sleep, he’s usually too tired to dream. But in that happy, sated slumber that usually follows sweet and intense sex, the blue terrors have been appearing more and more, startling him into wakefulness only to realise that he’s in his own bed, with Chloe beside him, and there’s nothing to worry about. At least, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. He’s as perturbed by the whole thing as Chloe is, and he wonders who they can turn to on the ship aside from each other. There isn’t anyone, really. No-one else has been through the same things they have. They just have to glean what solace they can in each other’s company.

Not that it’s particularly hard to feel better with Chloe around. There’s something about her quiet strength and positivity that acts as a foil for his own numerous less sociable traits. They work well together, sparking off each other and encouraging each other in the face of what is still the disbelief and distrust of the rest of the crew. It has taken a long time for some to come to terms with the fact that they’re now together. Some longer than others. Nick ignores the snide looks and the comments that they think he can’t hear. The opinions of others have always mattered very little to him. He just rejoices in the fact that someone as young and lovely and capable as Chloe could have been attracted to someone like him. A part of him can’t quite believe it himself, and the most cynical part of him keeps waiting for the day when she will turn around and tell him that it was all a trick, leaving him bereft and heartbroken. But so far, that hasn’t happened yet, and whilst she’s here in his arms and he’s not doing anything else any way, he might as well just sit here and enjoy being in her presence.

“Of course, there is another explanation,” Chloe begins presently, and Nick can tell that there’s a little teasing tone in her voice; her mischievous side has woken up and is stretching its muscles. He’s glad of that; it means she’s feeling better, no longer so shaken from the nightmare that unnerved her enough to seek him out rather than turning over and going back to sleep. She looks up at him, and there’s a cheeky smile on her face, illuminating her blue eyes.

“And what might that explanation be?” Nick asks.

“Well…” Chloe traces a fingertip down the line of his waistcoat where it sits open over his shirts. “The dreams are always worse when you’re not there. So the other explanation is that you’re my personal dreamcatcher and I’m just going to have to keep you in bed whenever I’m there, just in case.”

“I see.” He raises an eyebrow. “I can foresee a few problems with this practice,” he says.

“Yes, so can I,” Chloe laments. “The main one being that you never seem to stay in bed once you’re in there. Which is a crying shame, since we can’t all function on minus hours of sleep like you can. Sometimes, you know, I think you’d create extra hours in a day just to work through them all.”

“Some things are important,” Nick protests.

“And stopping your girlfriend from having nightmares isn’t?”

“Well…”

Chloe bats at his chest. “You’re awful, Nick.”

“You’ve known that a very long time.”

“Sadly, this is true. I only have myself to blame.” She pulls her attention away from his chest and looks up at his face before craning her neck to capture his lips in a kiss that Nick is all too happy to return, with fervour. He cards his fingers into her hair, pulling her in closer, and then Chloe is shifting around in his arms to straddle his lap in the command chair, her arms locked around his neck and her chest pressed up against his.

“Come to bed, Nick,” she whispers as she finally pulls away and he opens his eyes to gaze into hers, full of a desire that he never would have thought possible towards him. “Perhaps the promise of enjoyable activities other than sleeping can convince you to stay, this time?”

“I might well be enticed,” Nick says. He can already feel his body responding to her overt ministrations, and it’s not as if he’s doing anything else at the moment. There’s a lot that he could be doing, but since he was not actually doing any of it when she came in, this can hardly be called an interruption. Even if it could, it’s a very welcome one.

Part of him wants to say ‘screw bed’ and take her right here in the bridge, in this chair where Young so often sits. It’s not as if there is much chance of anyone walking in on them at this time of a night. One day they’ll do it, but not now. For all she is playing the part of the wanton seductress, Nick can tell that Chloe is still shaken from her dream, and she needs the comfort and intimacy of familiar surroundings to make her feel better and get her back to sleep again, a sleep that will hopefully not turn against her this time. As much as he would like to christen the bridge and claim it as theirs in the most primal of ways, Nick knows that it is not exactly conducive to restful sleep – he’s passed out from exhaustion here often enough – and restful sleep is what Chloe needs after her broken night. To be honest, he could probably do with some shut-eye himself. He tries to remember the last time he slept solidly rather than cat-napping through his work when his body was too tired to keep going. He can’t, which probably isn’t healthy but hasn’t exactly bothered him before.

“Come on.” Chloe slides off his lap and holds out a hand to him. “Bed time, Dr Rush.”

“As you wish, Miss Armstrong.”

He takes her hand and pulls himself out of the chair, letting her guide him out of the bridge and along the corridors to their quarters. There’s no-one around, and there’s something so innocent in just walking along hand in hand like this that makes Nick smile, and in turn, that makes Chloe smile.

“I like it when you smile,” she says. “It’s like seeing a whole new side of you. And you do it so rarely, it feels like you do it just for me. I’m the only one who gets to see this part of you.”

Nick just laughs. “Perhaps you’re the only one who ever gives me reason to smile about anything.”

“Surely that’s not true.”

“You’d be surprised.”

They reach their quarters still holding hands, and Nick palms the door open. Chloe goes over to the bed, straightening out the covers till they’re pristine again and show no signs of her earlier tossing and turning in her distress. Nick watches her from the doorway until she stands with hands on hips, satisfied with her efforts, and he goes over, placing his hands over her own and pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. Chloe just gives a hum of pleasure and leans back against him, lacing her fingers through his. He’ll chase her bad dreams away. Chloe is perfectly able to take care of herself; she doesn’t need protecting in that sense of the word, but on occasions like this, when she seeks out his protection and asks for the safety that he provides, the safety that they provide each other, Nick is all too happy to oblige her. Gradually he pulls his hands free and slips them up under her top, undoing her bra and snaking his fingers up under the cups to hold her breasts, teasing her nipples and smiling against her neck at the little grunts of pleasure that she makes. Presently she moves his hands and turns to face him, rubbing up against his crotch where his arousal is already making itself very apparent.

“Your turn,” she says, and moments later, he feels her hand slip down beneath the waistband of jeans and underwear, fondling his balls, and Nick narrows his eyes at her touch. They learned their way around each other’s bodies very quickly once they first started sleeping together, falling into rhythm with each other as easily as breathing. The kiss that Chloe gives him now is soft, maybe a little tentative, and it betrays the fear caused by the nightmares that she still feels in spite of it all.

“Come to bed and give me some good dreams, Nick?” she asks.

“With pleasure.”

She helps him pull off his layers of shirts and makes quick work of his belt buckle before Nick stills her hands and helps her out of her own clothes, encouraging her to slip between the sheets and get comfortable. Chloe grins her mischievous little grin and pulls him down on top of her by the belt, ending in a tangle of limbs and bedclothes and giggles and soft kisses. Once he’s wrestled himself free of the remainder of his attire, Nick takes Chloe in his arms, peppering her neck and chest with kisses, determined to undo her so thoroughly that there will be no chance of any untoward dreams returning tonight. Although, with the way that she’s moving against him, her hands seeming to be everywhere at once and gloriously distracting, she’s doing a very good job of undoing him before he’s got started.

“I thought I was meant to be the one chasing your nightmares away, not the other way round,” he growls, grabbing her hands and raising them above her head, pinning her down to the pillows then releasing her to kiss her forehead, nose, lips.

“I know,” Chloe teases. “I just thought that I’d give you a helping hand.”

“I can assure you that my hands need no help, sweetheart.”

“Oh, I’m very aware of that.” Chloe’s voice is husky and her eyes are encouraging him onwards, and Nick slides off her so that he can snake a hand down between her thighs. She’s warm and wet and ready, but right now Nick wants to take his time. She deserves that much, after what she’s already been through earlier in the night. He knows all the places that make her fall apart, and he touches her languidly, tracing circles around her clit but never quite touching it, dipping a finger into her entrance to swipe up her pooling honey, but never staying in one place too long. Chloe’s gasping beside him, back arching off the bed as she rubs herself up against his hand, eager for more. Nick just presses a kiss to her shoulder, smiling against her skin. He’s not done yet, but Chloe has other ideas, one of her hands coming down and closing over his own, keeping him exactly where she wants him.

“Enough teasing, Nick,” she pants. “I need to come… I feel like I’m going to explode.”

Nick obliges, sliding one finger inside to pet at her inner walls and finally pressing the pad of his thumb against her clit. It’s only a few seconds later that he feels her clench around him and hears her cry out.

“Oh _Nick_!”

His name from her lips like this might well be the most erotic thing he’s ever heard, and he leans in to kiss her lips, to capture the sound and keep it, their secret – not that their relationship is much of a secret throughout the ship any more. As Chloe comes back to herself from that wonderful high, Nick feels her arms come around his shoulders, pulling him in closer against her until he’s certain that there’s no oxygen between them at all.

“No more nightmares,” she breathes as she finally releases him.

“Not tonight,” Nick agrees.

“And not for you, either.”

She pushes him over onto his back, and Nick lets her slip on top of him, straddling him and tracing doodles over his chest with one fingertip, smiling at his hiss of pleasure every time she catches a nipple. Eventually her hand moves lower and lower until it’s wrapped around his length, stroking him up and down and running her thumb through the liquid beading at the tip of his cock before lining them up and carefully taking him inside.

Nick thrusts up to meet her as she rocks her hips against his, his fingers digging into her bottom for purchase. They’re so close, literally, damp skin sliding together, Chloe’s breasts pressed up against his chest and her hands tangled in his hair. She’s so beautiful like this, with mussed up hair and sultry blue eyes and the feel of her around him…

Coherent thought is lost as he comes in a hot flood of ecstasy, muffling his moans in Chloe’s skin.

“Chloe…”

“Nick.”

He’d be perfectly content to stay like that, buried inside Chloe with her warm weight sprawled on top of him, but at length she shifts and he slips out of her, and she extricates their boneless limbs from the tangle of covers, pulling them up to her chin. But then her head is back pillowed against his shoulder, and Nick holds her close, listening to her breathing.

“I love you,” she murmurs sleepily.

Nick kisses the top of her head. “I love you too.”

He feels the moment she falls asleep against him, her body soft and lax beside him, and he closes his eyes, letting slumber come to him, too.

There’ll be no more nightmares tonight, for either of them.


End file.
